Episode 420: PalaeoPoems with Brigid & Mike. Plus ‘Spinosaurus is not an aquatic dinosaur’ according to a new paper, a new T. rex going on display, Big Al pathologies, and our SVP wrap up

News:

• “Spinosaurus is not an aquatic dinosaur” according to a new analysis of its buoyancy and body shape source
• A T. rex skeleton, nicknamed Shen, was supposed to go on sale but instead will be on display at a museum (for now) source
• The Natural History Museum in London is getting a Patagotitan source
• Our last coverage of SVP 2022 including pachycephalosaurs, Big Al pathologies, bird hearts, and more source

Interview:

Brigid and Mike from PalaeoPoems. Brigid Christison has a Master’s in Biology and is the founder and manager of PalaeoPoems. Mike Thompson is working on a PhD in Paleontology & Sedimentology at the University of Manitoba and writes the science behind the PalaeoPoems. Check them out at www.palaeopoems.com on twitter or Instagram and sign up for their newsletter at tinyletter

Sponsors:

This episode is brought to you by the Sternberg Museum of Natural History. They have amazing summer camps every year including field paleontology, paleoart, and virtual options. Find out more and sign up at https://bit.ly/camps23

The dinosaur of the day: Eucamerotus

• Sauropod that lived in the Early Cretaceous in what is now the Isle of Wight, England (Wessex Formation)
• Looked like other sauropods, with a long neck, four columnar legs, and small head
• Depicted as neck more upright, like Brachiosaurus
• One estimate to be about 49.2 ft or 15 m long, based on the vertebrae, and assuming it’s a brachiosaurid
• Type species is Eucamerotus foxi
• Genus name means “well-chambered”
• Refers to the hollows of the vertebrae
• Named by William Blows in 1995
• John Hulke named Eucamerotus in 1870, but didn’t give it a species name
• Hulke wrote in 1870 about “the neural arch of a huge Wealden vertebra”
• Described a neural arch that William Fox found
• Later Hulke referred Eucamerotus to be a junior synonym of Ornithopsis
• Ornithopsis was a medium-sized sauropod (genus name means “bird-likeness”)
• In 1882 Hulke described pelvis fossils as Ornithopsis eucamerotus
• Hulke wrote in 1882 about the pubis and ischium of Ornithopsis eucamerotus that the late Rev. W. Fox, who found the bones: “permitted me to take a rough sketch of them, but for a long time he would not allow their complete extrication from the rock, nor the readjustment of the many fragments into which they were broken” (eventually the British Museum reconstructed the fossils)
• William Blows in 1995 said Eucamerotus was a valid brachiosaurid
• Species name after William Fox who collected most of the fossils (later assigned by Blows as the paratypes)
• Blows said that Owen, Seeley, Hulke, and others established several sauropods “mostly based on inadequate material”
• Ornithopsis hulkei was named based on two dorsal centra
• Blows found that only the holotype of Ornithopsis was Ornithopsis and that other fossils referred to Ornithopsis were either Eucamerotus or Sauropoda Incertae Sedis
• Ornithopsis and Eucamerotus have also in the past been synonymized with Pelorosaurus, but Blows said they should be considered separate because none of the type specimens have overlapping fossils to compare with
• Blows referred dorsal vertebrae and other fossils (5 paratypes) to Eucamerotus, but not everyone agrees with this, because they don’t have the same features as the holotype (the robust parapophyses)
• SV-POW wrote about how both Ornithopsis and Eucamerotus were named based on type specimens that were “pretty undiagnostic”, though the neural arch of Eucamerotus does have one unique feature (robust parapophyses, projections of vertebrae)
• In 2001 Naish and Martill suggested Eucamerotus was a dubious brachiosaurid, and Upchurch and others in 2004 considered it to be dubious
• Campbell and others in 2017 found Eucamerotus to be valid (though not sure if it was peer reviewed?)
• There’s another specimen, known as the Barnes High Sauropod, that may be Eucamerotus
• Undescribed, but found in 1992 in the Wessex Formation and is about 40% complete, with similarities in the vertebrae to Eucamerotus
• However, the ownership of the specimen is complicated and doesn’t sound like it’s available to researchers
• Lived in a semi arid environment with lots of conifers and ferns
• Other dinosaurs that lived around the same time and place included sauropods, theropods such as compsognathids, spinosaurs, tyrannosaurs, raptors, ornithischians such as iguanodonts and heterodonts
• Other animals that lived around the same time and place included fish, turtles, plesiosaurs, pterosaurs, and mammals

Fun Fact:

Ceratopsians broke and lost their horns in many different ways.

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